Poor, poor CHA. No respect.
With Intimidating Prowess there is basically no reason not to dump CHA for fighters. It's not like they have many mechanical reasons not to and the penalty of -2 for CHA linked skill checks can be negated by a minimal investment in the intimidate skill.
Charisma gets no respect because it just doesn't have enough mechanical impacts on the game outside of CHA-casters and paladins.
I was going to name my first child Meanrock Destructotron Lamontius but I think now I'm leaning toward Strength Ranger Lamontius.
The changes to Combat Maneuvers and spiked chain have also made lock-down chain-trippers much less powerful which was one of the prime martial combos in 3.5.From what I've seen IN PLAY, it's only nerfed chain tripping from obscenely powerful to amazingly powerful.
We both know that for a certain percentage of gamers if it's not in the potentially game breaking category it's not viable.
Personally the chain tripper never appealed to me as a concept so I've only rarely made PCs or NPCs that relied on tripping as maneuver but I do think there has been some changes in the game in the transition from 3.5 to PF that have made some of the more awesome builds much less intimidating.
In the absence of those builds some people basically view the Fighter as a Warrior+. Definitely better than the average NPC class but still not on the level of a true PC class.
Personally I think the Fighter definitely has it's role in the game but I would definitely of preferred that Paizo had patched some of the ultra combat focused aspects of the design in favor of a more broadly applicable class design.
... all characters has to optimize to an extent to survive and still be useful...When you start pitting the party against stuff much harder than that, most classes will have a hard time surviving unless optimized.
The fighter is no different than anyone else, which is exactly what I was saying.
I agree 100%.
My play experience is that chain tripping is great at low levels when your opponents are primarily medium humanoid martials. Once casters, flying beasts, and things with many legs or that are otherwise untrippable become commonplace, it flips from great to useless.
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@Deyvantius
A Lore Warden still needs that Int 13 to grab the maneuver feats. And he lost proficiency with medium and heavy armor. I like the archetype for its increased CMB/CMD and extra skill points, but it still suffers from most of the vanilla Fighter's limitations.
Yeah, a Fighter can increase his Int for better skill points, but everyone can do that. And many of the other classes get a lot more from higher Int than Fighters do. The fact that Fighters have to increase their Int to still have lass skill points than a Barbarian is a flaw.
Being "able to raise Int" and "being human" are not Fighter features.
Fighters out of combat utility is nearly zero, and his in-combat versatility is restricted and punished by lousy prerequisites and way too long feat chains.
And if your high-level enemies aren't flying, your GM is probably trying to help you, because Fly is a low level spell, and potions and items that grant flight are pretty common. Not to mention the increasing number of creatures capable of flight as the levels go up.
We had rules for "tripping" flying creatures in 3.5, it wasn't a real trip attempt, it just used the same mechanics, it's a shame those were removed in PF.
And don't tell me I'm a optimizer instead of roleplayer, I can roleplay and still optimize, there is nothing stopping me from doing both. My character's class shouldn't punish me for not taking a Weapon Focus/Specialization every time. If I want to be a Master of Combat Maneuvers, I shouldn't have to grab an useless feat that I'll most likely never use and an arbitrary attribute score that does nothing for me (especially when a wolf with Int 2 has Improved Trip).
I'm not sure whether it makes me happy or sad that almost my entire experience with this game is at...low level.
@LEMMY
He can take proficiency with his extra feats.
I never said anyone was or wasn't an optimizer, I don't get into that stuff, I'm simply saying a fighter is no less limited than any other class.
It seems the only argument against them is their limited number of skills, which can easily be overcome.
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I never said anyone was or wasn't an optimizer, I don't get into that stuff,
....Oh waaaiitt.. that would mean you are slightly less optimized and might not be able to one hit the bad guy in one round and you can't win Pathfinder...bummer
Seriously folks, there are few boring classes, usually it's just a boring player.
I never said anyone was or wasn't an optimizer, I don't get into that stuff,
You are using what I like to call "Optimization Theory" to determine what feats to take and not to take rather than role-playing reality.
I never said anyone was or wasn't an optimizer, I don't get into that stuff,
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The problem is that feats are usually not as good as actuall Class features. Even for the Fighter!
His feats are not as good as Weapon Training or Armor Training.
Fighters have poor skill points, poor saves, very little out of combat utility and even lack of in-combat versatility unless he pays a lot for them.
If he focuses on his combat numbers, his utility falls down to nearly zero, and his numbers are still not that much better than a Barbarian, Ranger, Gunslinger or Paladin (I dunno about Cavaliers, as I don't know that class very well).
If he wants more his out-of-combat options or in-combat versatility, he has to invest a lot more than any other class and still risk not being as good as them. And his one reason to be, his combat prowess, suffers a considerable amount.
EDIT: Fighters can have creative builds with lots of cool things to do, as Bob proved time and time again, but they have to invest a lot more than anyone else.
IMHO, the one real advantage Fighters have is the ability to be awesome at both melee and ranged combat by 8th~10th level while still having great AC and DPR.
Unfortunatelly, IMHO, dealing 10~15% more damage is not enough to justify its complete lack of class features. So if I want a switch hitter type of character, I'd still go with a Ranger.
Now that's a Dirty Trick.
You obviously took Combat Expertise.
So Roberta after all that posting where did I call someone an Optimizer vs. a role player?
Those statements are in regards to building a character, not characterizing someone's play style. I optimize too.
Lemmy, I get your point but I seriously don't see what a fighter loses by using a few feats to take non combat feats.
He loses much of his combat effectiveness. And that's all fighters have going for them.
If a Fighter's AC/DPR/maneuvers/whatever-combat-stuff are not considerably higher than everyone else... Why play them at all?
Better play a Barb and have more skill points, higher movement speed, trap finding and cool Rage powers. Or a Rangers, and have a crapton of skills, animal companions, spells, better saves and amazing stealth. Or a Paladins, and have incredible saves, spells, detect & smite evil and good social skills (without suffering for the Cha investment). Or a gunslinger, who has more skills, better saves, better class skill and is very SAD (poor thing ^^).
That's why I'm in favor of feats that expand the characters options, scale with level and/or give Fighters an extra benefit (like the example I gave with my houseruled Weapon Focus).
The numerous feats, armor training, weapon training, bravery, a fighter has more than enough combat effectiveness to spare.
Weapon training itself is a +4/+4; plus along with specialization, critical focus,weapon focus, etc. He is going to murderous. Use the spare feats for Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, etc and he will have decent saves (DECENT is the word here, nothing can make up for everything and everyone with the exception of the monk and maybe paladin will be hurting somewhere).
I don't know, maybe I'm just used to fighters being decently optimized all the way through with power attack and the weapon focus tree. I haven't found many scenarios where a specific feat would have saved the day, but then again there's always someone in the next town faster...
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The numerous feats, armor training, weapon training, bravery, a fighter has more than enough combat effectiveness to spare.
Weapon training itself is a +4/+4; plus along with specialization, critical focus,weapon focus, etc. He is going to murderous.
I never doubted that a focused Fighter has the highest AC/DPR of any class. I even said that a few times! I just don't think that's enough to compensate for his complete lack of out-of-combat utility and in-combat versatility (other than being capable at melee/ranged combat).
I don't know, maybe I'm just used to fighters being decently optimized all the way through with power attack and the weapon focus tree. I haven't found many scenarios where a specific feat would have saved the day, but then again there's always someone in the next town faster...
That's the thing, the Fighter's numbers may be the highest, but they are not that much higher! Compare to a raging Barbarian (any Barbarian can easily have enough rounds to Rage at nearly every combat, all combat!)
Use the spare feats for Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, etc and he will have decent saves (DECENT is the word here, nothing can make up for everything and everyone with the exception of the monk and maybe paladin will be hurting somewhere).
And here's yet another flaw... Fighter is sacrificing his main class features to be only decent. That's like a Paladin archetype that sacrifices Detect/Smite Evil to get low-light vision and Survival as a class skill. Or a Ranger archetype who sacrifices Favored Enemy to get +4 to Diplomacy and Bluff Checks.
Feats are pretty weak compared to other class features, and fighters must sacrifice a lot of them just to qualify for the cool/useful ones.
... all characters has to optimize to an extent to survive and still be useful...When you start pitting the party against stuff much harder than that, most classes will have a hard time surviving unless optimized.
The fighter is no different than anyone else, which is exactly what I was saying.
I agree 100%.
Well, first of, optimizing a fighter can be harder - and secondly, when you get to that level of optimization, fighter pretty much are stuck with being boring, to a large degree. That's part of the reason why I don't like playing at that kind of difficulty/that level of optimization.
The thing is that most other classes, when they are optimized, has out of combat stuff to do. EDIT: I must add that I think cavalier has equal issues with lack of out-of-combat stuff, and barbarian nearly so.
Spoiler:Its depends what would you call to optimize.Having the highest str while dumping cha,wis and int is something I would not call optimize. For example for a 20 Pb I see things like [spoiler]
Srt 20
DeX 12
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 10
Cha 7Sure it does more damage but I do not like it. I prefer a array like
Srt 18
Dex 13
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 14
Cha 7or
Srt 18
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 12
Cha 7.Even
Srt 16
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 14
Cha 8would work just fine. Contrary to some weirds claims, fighters do not struggle to do damage, they do not need the mamimum posible str.
First of, a 20pb is generous - if you're on a 15 pb things are much harder.
If you want 12 Int, I agree that his is a pretty solid stat array for a THF:
Str 18/Dex 12/Con 14/Int 12/Wis 14/Cha 7
But if you drop that int to 7, you can bring the wis to 14 and the dex or the con to 15.
On a 15pb (the standard), you're choosing between
Str 16/Dex 12/Con 14/Int 12/Wis 14/Cha 7
and
Str 18/Dex 13/Con 14/Int 7/Wis 14/Cha 7
Every time you miss by one you'll feel that 16 str. And at 1st level, dealing two damage less per hit will feel quite a lot. There's a large difference between Greatsword +4 (2d6+4) and Greatsword +5 (2d6+6).
For a TWFer, which needs to start out with 15 dex, it's a LOT harder to not dump intelligence. A 12 intelligence 15 pb TWF looks something like:
Str 14/Dex 15/Con 14/Int 12/Wis 14/Cha 7
Compare to:
Str 16/Dex 16/Con 14/Int 7/Wis 14/Cha 7
Archers have similar issues as TWF.
Weapon Training is a good ability. Armor Training is a decent ability. Bravery is a terrible ability. As far as damage goes, Fighters are behind other classes if all they rely on is Weapon Training (it reaches +4/+3/+2/+1, with a possibly +2 from a magic item) unless you sack 4/11 feats into a single weapon (reaching a potential of +8/+10 with your best weapon) at which point you can exceed a barbarian's rage (+4/+6) but fail to exceed a Ranger's primary enemy (+10/+10), but since its passive I'm okay with that.
The problem is that Fighters have only these things going for them. Bravery (barf), Weapon Training (good), Armor Training (fair), and 11 bonus feats. Unfortunately, 4/11ths of those feats have to be invested into weapon speccing to make Fighters look better at dealing damage, leaving them with 7 feats + 1 good class feature. Now everyone seems to like talking about Improved Trip or being able to climb feat trees. You're not doing much in that direction. Taking Greater Trip for example means expending 3 feats and requiring a 13 Intelligence. So now you're down to 4 feats. I guess now you can get Power Attack, Improved Grapple, Greater Grapple, and Deadly Aim. Congratulations, you're done.
Rangers on the other hand get 5 great feats without prerequisites. Can easily acquire their other feats with general feats, and have a ton of features that are easily on par with feats. Now normally I'm not a big fan of forced feats, but when you get soooo many of them for free, who cares as long as they're good in enough situations (and they are).
Then there's the fact that, honestly, the best feats aren't difficult to qualify for at all. All a martial needs to succeed is Power Attack and Deadly Aim to convert excess to-hit into +damage. Everything else is gravy, and the best feats at high levels are things like Dazing Assault (this feat is pretty much broken :P) which don't require any huge feat trees.
And again, I stand by the assertion that Rangers get way more "feats" which are useful by virtue of their class features, because all a feat is is an ability. Rangers get lots of those. Lots of very useful ones. Ones that contribute both in and out of combat excessively.
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Please stop with the feat and class feature comparison because it's highly irrelevant to the design of the fighter. What the fighter is designed to do is use all those bonus feats to choose multiple things and design your fighter how ever you want. Also, please stop using the "well since he took A then he can't take Z" as a basis for your arguments. Bob has already proven many times over that a fighter can be good at fighting, be good at will saves and have good skills. The fighter isn't good at everything, no class is so I'm not sure why these arguments about the fighter always end up leading that way.
The fighter is good at what it was designed to do. If you want to do more outside of that then there are plenty of feats and archtypes that allow you to do this.
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I agree that Bob has shown it possible to build interesting and effective fighters at pretty high optimization level.
The fact that he's more or less alone in easily being able to do that shows there is an issue with the fighter. Most other classes most people around here can make both interesting and effective characters from.
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Weapon Training is a good ability. Armor Training is a decent ability. Bravery is a terrible ability. As far as damage goes, Fighters are behind other classes if all they rely on is Weapon Training (it reaches +4/+3/+2/+1, with a possibly +2 from a magic item) unless you sack 4/11 feats into a single weapon (reaching a potential of +8/+10 with your best weapon) at which point you can exceed a barbarian's rage (+4/+6) but fail to exceed a Ranger's primary enemy (+10/+10), but since its passive I'm okay with that.
The ranger has to heavily rely on his Favored Enemy which is highly more risky than the fighter's Weapon Training ability. If you are a fighter who specializes in heavy blades then a player needs to be smart enough to carry some back up heavy blades just in case. It's also okay every know and then if you need access to a weapon outside of your Weapon Training because you are still going to be kicking ass but just not as much. It's like being shot once compared to being shot twice, being shot once can do the job but being hit twice increases those odds.
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I agree that Bob has shown it possible to build interesting and effective fighters at pretty high optimization level.
The fact that he's more or less alone in easily being able to do that shows there is an issue with the fighter. Most other classes most people around here can make both interesting and effective characters from.
I can promise you that Bob's not alone. Nobody else really needs to post anything else because Bob has already made the statement clear.
That's like Bob posting 2 + 2 = 4 and then I post 2 + 2 = 4. There's no point in me posting the same thing.
Yeah I think it's already been established that no one else can build an interesting fighter. I mean, other than everyone else that can build one.
Sorry if I was unclear. I do not mean no-one else can. I mean that if you look at various builds around the forums for fighters, they are _often_ not very well optimized or they are boring. When it comes to most other classes, they are _often_ both well-optimized and has lots of cool abilities.
A lot of posters have commented on Bobs fighters in the vein of "wow, those are really cool and versatile". Would the commenting have been as heavy if the characters where summoners, druids, or paladins? I doubt it, looking at how other character builds are commented on.
I play a fighter myself right now, and I find it very enjoyable, optimized enough for the difficulty level of the campaign and it has a lot of cool tricks (though these are mostly based on having cool equipment, rather than being class based, and the other players being new enough not to know about everything you can pull out of your sleeve).
I'm not in any way saying you can't build cool, effective fighters. I'm saying there's a higher threshold to build fighters that are both, and while it's anecdotal, I think it's still fair to use the builds that are posted on these boards as circumstantial evidence of that.
I didn't mean hard mode in that way, and neither did I imply you where used to play "easy mode" either - it's not about how many resurrections, but about encounters like this demon horde, or when they use example fights 4 CR over the intended in one on ones (pitting a level 10 fighter against a CR 10 monster for example).
At that point, you can't easily put 6 points in intelligence (compared to dumping it to 7) and neither can you easily put a feat into fast learner (which you'd only take if you've already got toughness, which also is a so-and-so feat). Taking such a character through the story might be possible if you're an incredibly skilled player, but you're going to feel just how much harder it is when you gave up a 14 wisdom or dex or con for those skill points.
Now, there are of course a wide scale of difficulties and optimization levels, but I think that's part of why people see this as a big issue (and part of why I _don't_ see it as that big of an issue).
Hm, I'm surprised my demon horde showed up as an example. It seems pretty much in keeping with the way demons are expected to function. A lone marilith for example would be incredibly odd unless she was somehow called to the material plane all on her lonesome. For example, the Marilith in the Bestiary says:
The leaders of Abyssal hordes and queens of Abyssal nations, the dreaded mariliths serve demon lords as governesses, advisors, and even lovers, yet their brilliance as tacticians makes them most sought after as generals and commanders of armies. The most powerful mariliths serve no one, and instead command ravenous fiendish legions.
The encounter itself is by the book as well. They are not over-CR'd and are something you'd actually be able to expect to encounter at 17th+ level and be able to overcome without too much difficulty if your party is decently balanced (as in has a few major roles covered, such as divine, arcane, martial, support).
Amusingly, at this point I don't expect a great deal of difference in effectiveness from a 15, 20, or 25 point buy character. By this point those differences will be around a +3 at best, and encounters of epic magnitude generally reward mastery of your abilities rather than the raw strength of those abilities. By mastery, I mean by the time you've slugged through 17 levels of *insert your character here* then by golly you'd best know how to handle stuff. Don't whine at me if you're poisoned, or if you're facing a flying enemy, or if someone is using illusions or summoned monsters or hordes at 17th+ level, because you're 17th level old and you're a big boy/girl now. :P
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I think if you are willing to go THF with a big weapon Weapon Training/ Weapon Focus/ Weapon Specialization/ Power Attack / Imp. Crit + appropriate magical gear is generally enough to cover raw DPR needs for the fighter. You are going to be able to do significant damage to anything CR appropriate. Basically you can generally 1-2 round most CR equivalent foes at this level of optimization.
That generally leaves a decent number of feat slots for shoring up other aspects of the character although I resent having to take Iron Will as a matter of course.
TWF/ TWF (Sword & Board)/Archer build generally are a bit more feat and ability score intense in terms of being effective and even then often lag behind the THF build. Charger builds are generally better built with Cavaliers.
What I kinda resent in the design is that I basically have 4 basic build paths (archer, THF, TWF, TWF (Sword & Board) and one is clearly easier to do at all point buy levels and even then I generally get stuck with the big dumb fighter archetype. I don't really like the Barbarian that much but in many ways it does big dumb warrior with a killstick better than the fighter. Yeah the Fighter is going to have a better AC but is generally going to be inferior in terms of mobility and skill usage.
Having grown up with 1e and 2e Fighters I felt like the 3.x/PF fighter was in many ways a step back and it didn't have to be that way. Yes I understand that people are adamant about the fighter staying a muggle but I think you could simulate the fighter doing a bunch more stuff in combat and out of combat without going automatically to fighter = spellcaster.
I'm not saying they are over-CR'd, I'm saying it's a very optimized encounter and you need to have optimized characters and good players, or good characters and very good players for it.
The point is that the difficulty of forum-made encounters for a certain party level is far higher than the difficulty on AP encounters for similar party levels. Didn't have any other forum-made encounter on hand, really should have gotten a CR 10 or so encounter so it could be compared to an AP encounter.
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Weapon Training is a good ability. Armor Training is a decent ability. Bravery is a terrible ability. As far as damage goes, Fighters are behind other classes if all they rely on is Weapon Training (it reaches +4/+3/+2/+1, with a possibly +2 from a magic item) unless you sack 4/11 feats into a single weapon (reaching a potential of +8/+10 with your best weapon) at which point you can exceed a barbarian's rage (+4/+6) but fail to exceed a Ranger's primary enemy (+10/+10), but since its passive I'm okay with that.The ranger has to heavily rely on his Favored Enemy which is highly more risky than the fighter's Weapon Training ability. If you are a fighter who specializes in heavy blades then a player needs to be smart enough to carry some back up heavy blades just in case. It's also okay every know and then if you need access to a weapon outside of your Weapon Training because you are still going to be kicking ass but just not as much. It's like being shot once compared to being shot twice, being shot once can do the job but being hit twice increases those odds.
I don't find favored enemy more limited at all. It applies to any weapon I use, combat maneuvers, and my fists as I like it. Choosing favored enemies like Undead, Evil Outsiders, Dragons, Aberrations, Constructs, Animals, or Magical Beasts tends to mean there are precious few campaigns you are going to go through that won't reward your choices (seriously, these are really broad), and later you get the option to turn it into a smite-effect by picking an enemy to apply it to even if they normally wouldn't.
Since against most enemies normal martial power is easily enough (frankly against humanoid enemies you will rarely need the extra oomph because humanoid enemies are only formidable if your GM uses the bestiary rules for advancing enemies, whereas if they use the bit in the CRB under Gamemastering to do it then humanoid enemies are practically easy treasure/XP speedbumps because the math does not add up there) I'd rather have the bonuses against monstrous creatures for sure. I'd rather those bonuses apply to any weapon I'm wielding as well. I'd rather be able to swap to my longbow when a wyvern takes flight and get my +2/+2 to damage with that as easily as when I'm fighting it on the ground. Or be able to interchange between my club and sword as needed while plowing through skeletons and zombies. Or be able to find a cool but unusual weapon and be able to know that my class isn't going to suddenly shut down because I'm now using a +1 frost battleaxe instead of my masterwork scimitar.
So unless the fighter is using his one true weapon, he's not better off than any other martial character in terms of hit and damage (he's actually worse off than a barbarian in most cases), and then his class suffers elsewhere because it blows out of combat, it smells when it comes to saving throws, and it hemorrhages "class features" and ability points away for its illusory "versatility". Versatility that becomes increasingly less versatile as levels rise.
It's one of the biggest reasons I favor fighters as archers. Just shoot the damn thing and keep shooting. It's hard to screw up. You can afford to max-spec the bow and use different types of arrows, and bows are common enough that you'll probably be able to find arrows and such pretty frequently, and all you need to be decent in melee is a greatsword and a good Strength score. Since you can full-attack each round with a bow, all those little static modifiers look way sexier than they would otherwise, and you can grab some feats to use your bow in melee. Much as in Baldur's Gate I & II, Fighters excel as archers but make piss poor tanks and lackluster melee unless the game caters to giving them their one-true-weapon.
A martial who doesn't carry a wide variety of different types of weapons is a fool. Every martial should have a reach weapon, a ranged weapon, a backup sling, at least one light weapon (preferably slashing), a weapon difficult to disarm (armor spikes or spiked gauntlet), and at least one of every damage type (slashing, bludgeoning, or piercing), and one of every possible material (silver, cold iron, and eventually adamantine). Fighters should be the undisputed masters of weaponry, but they aren't. They're the undisputed masters of 1 or 2 weapons at max.
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What I kinda resent in the design is that I basically have 4 basic build paths (archer, THF, TWF, TWF (Sword & Board) and one is clearly easier to do at all point buy levels and even then I generally get stuck with the big dumb fighter archetype. I don't really like the Barbarian that much but in many ways it does big dumb warrior with a killstick better than the fighter. Yeah the Fighter is going to have a better AC but is generally going to be inferior in terms of mobility and skill usage.
Funny, I never noticed they all kind of boil down to this. I tried to think of another type of fighting style, and the best I could come up with was the whip. You can two-hand a whip, or TWF with it, focus on STR or DEX, and still be a trip build that plays like a THF build with lower DPR. They really nerfed the whip from 3.5, because they said they wanted it to be more of a tool than a weapon, but it's still a decent choice.
I think more exotic weapons would help the fighter. The fact that Elf fighters are viable because of the Elven Curve Blade really says something about how a new weapon can breath new life into a fighter. And since fighters are the ones who can most easily spend a feat on proficiency, good exotic weapons are in a way a boost for the fighter.
Really, more exotic weapons that do more exotic things, that behave more like tools than weapons, would be a great help in giving fighters some new opportunities.
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Once 1e Unearthed Arcana brought in Fighter Weapon Specialization the idea of the Fighter as Master of Arms kinda went away. Yeah you still wanted to use you weapon proficiencies to get a wide variety of weapons especially if you used all the weapon vs armor charts and weapon speeds but once you realized the massive damage possible with a dedicated Two-handed sword or god forbid a dart specialist you tended to go down the one true build rabbit hole.
Personally I'd like to see a return of the fighter being able to beat someone to death with any given weapon (longsword, dagger, beer stein, bare fists, etc) so that you don't have to get trapped in the hyper specialization of WF/GWF/WS/GWS with fighters. Yes there should be some rewards to specialization but I think in general D&D rewards specialization to an excessive degree while hampering the talented generalist.
The same thing also happens with skill monkeys where +1 rank per level is basically assumed. The same thing often happens even with the casters where hyperspecialization revolves around pumping your Save DC into the stratosphere.
So while the fighter is kinda a blank slate that can be customized into a wide variety of builds you really can't build a generalist fighter without being severely hampered.
Now if you group is pretty laid back and you don't have to routinely fight CR +4 encounters you can get by with a low level of optimization and still have a lot of fun but I find that you almost have to have a agreement between all the Players and the GM because if one player goes optimized then pretty much everyone will.
I suppose is like a new player wondering why his wizard level 5th did only 8 point of damage. We all know what wizards are capable to do, but it should be clear that wizards can be very very unoptimized with bad choices, the same happens with fighters.
Out of the two, which can change his entire strategy around on the following day assuming he doesn't die due to his mistakes? I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with Lizard.
I'm not saying they are over-CR'd, I'm saying it's a very optimized encounter and you need to have optimized characters and good players, or good characters and very good players for it.
The point is that the difficulty of forum-made encounters for a certain party level is far higher than the difficulty on AP encounters for similar party levels. Didn't have any other forum-made encounter on hand, really should have gotten a CR 10 or so encounter so it could be compared to an AP encounter.
Fair enough. I was confused as to what you meant. I'm of the opinion that D&D has never been easy. I mean if you just go by the books and follow the rules it's a very hostile environment. I mean, encounters with animals are especially nasty at low-levels. A CR 4 tiger is practically a death-sentence for at least one 4th level party member, and against a 1st level party is almost assuredly a slaughter.
I once ran an adventure in a spider-infested forest that was loosely inspired by a combination of Baldur's Gate and the Hobbit. Ever actually looked at the rules for Web? Here's a group of players who are low-ish level, wandering around in the dark (the sun was mostly blocked out by the dense canopy that was littered with debris in the webs creating an eerie dimness in the forest so unless you were carrying a light you were in dim light during the day and darkness at night).
Now spider webs have a DC 20 Perception check to notice within 10 ft. of them and since Perception checks are rolled in secret they didn't know which paths through the forest were assuredly safe. Small-sized spiders have tremorsense 60 ft. and close to +20 Stealth in their webs with an additional +1 for every 10 ft. between them and the spotter. In other words, the spiders were lurking about in the trees waiting for something big and tasty to get stuck to their webs, at which point they come down webbing and biting like spiders do! Now each spider can web someone up to a size category larger than themselves (which is everything from a halfling to a half-giant) as a ranged touch-attack up to 8 times per day. Breaking out of a single instance of webbing is a standard action minimum so you can end up wasting lots of rounds if you keep trying to get out of webs, and more than likely the spiders are going to get a surprise round on you!
So here we are, with a few adventurers wandering along. The one in the lead gets stuck in a web because nobody noticed the web in the dim light. The spiders however are aware of the party due to their tremorsense 60 ft. The moment the party's barbarian wandered into the webbing, the spiders struck. Swish, swish, went the webs, caking across the group, until virtually everyone was covered in webs, and sometimes two! Now the advantage belonged to those of the web, and the spiders won the Initiative (the party was entangled during the surprise round and thus all had a -2 to their Initiatives!) and charged with their climb speeds down the trees to bite the hapless party members! Sting slurp the spiders bit the flat-footed barbarian (who was wearing the best armor you could afford at 2nd level, breastplate). The damage was mild but the poison remained!
The whole party was covered in webs (entangle = -2 to attacks and AC and issues casting spells), and so they had to decide whether or not they would try to break free and let the spiders keep biting them while they tried, or fight with the penalties. With each subsequent bite the barbarian suffered more and more Strength damage until he was raging to keep his Strength at 10. The bard shot them with his firearms, but the thunderous sound agitated nearby spiders and only served to flood the battle with even more spiders (an interesting trait of spiders, look it up)! Suddenly two spiders were six due to attracting other spiders to the scene, and the party was viciously chugging potions and trying to move. Unable to charge, moving at half speed, and their Strength failing them, they found themselves in a tight pickle, but managed to overcome it by burning off some of the webs and healing/chugging potions (the bites weren't particularly damaging but the ability damage was crushing).
After the battle they decided it would be a good time to rest. Unfortunately even with the Heal skill the ability score damage only returned at a rate of 2/day (or 4/day if they were resting fully), and the forest was a scary place indeed. Later in that adventure they encountered more giant spiders, a swarm of baby spiders perched on the mother's back (the moment they struck this exceptionally bulbous spider with bumps, they found to their horror a swarm of spiders spreading across the ground in a frenzy), and of course some ettercaps.
All of this is pretty much by the book. Ettercaps and Spiders are prone to forests, webs entangle and are difficult to see, lighting conditions allow for easy hiding, the DCs to notice the spiders were exceptional. The poisons were vicious. The encounters were within the usual ranges. They were just bestiary/MM monsters. Healing was done as normal. Encumbrance was followed. Poor bastards didn't even get any treasure out of the initial encounters (spiders do not have treasures, though the ettercaps kept some trinkets from those who came before).
This is not an optimized encounter. Merely a standard fantasy staple where the rules were followed. My players still shudder when I mention the spider forest with that group of players. Gotta love arachnophobia. :P
I never have problem with fighter in BG 2 nor in PF*. Unless the weapon you choose is a very rare one then you should have little poblem.
* Fighter in BG II were actually very good doing damage in melee and they have good saves only surpassed by paladins with their -2 to saves (yeah, is a minus).
They do have good saves, but in BG I (low levels) they are godly with bows (I ran through the vanilla game with a group of 4 single-classed fighters, 1 fighter/thief, and 1 fighter/mage and crushed everything I came across, and even high level enemies like Ogre Magi fell to the might of the bow when the group was only like 1st-2nd level).
Problem in both BG I and II (though it's less obvious immediately in BG II because the first half of the game is your 9th+ level party curbstomping low level humanoid NPCs at the Copper Coronet or slaying a few trolls) is that enemies that you tend to still be awfully squishy. If I needed a tank I'd just swap my bow for a sword & board in the first game and just hope to survive long enough for the other 5 members to turn them into a pincushin. In BG II however this sort of thing simply won't work, and the enemies you face quickly outpace your AC. In fact, unless you are using a mod which allows things like armors, rings, and amulets to stack you are going to find there is very little difference in wearing full plate and carrying a shield and going around naked. Enemies in BG II - particularly any of them that are important - just do not care about your AC.
I found myself having far greater luck tanking with mages and druids or ranger/clerics due to spells like stoneskin and ironskin, because when your AC doesn't matter those spells keep you alive. Since enemies deal such excessive damage and your HP doesn't get super high and healing super sucks (with the exception of the amazing regeneration and heal spells) your melee-fighter will get curbstomped. I've sadly seen it happen on many, many a playthrough. Their saves are the best, but again unless you've got mods allowing items to stack, then the immunities of classes like the Inquisitor or Cavalier greatly exceed them in usefulness (immunity to hold/charm/fear is epic).
As I became more experienced with both games, Fighters slowly got edged out. Archery Rangers are better archers than Fighters in BG II and get spells (sweet sweet spells) and get points in dual-wielding (which means you can melee it up if you need to without a lot of issues due to your high THAC0), and Inquisitor Paladins lacked spells but were just amazing vs mages and were still martials (also good with bows because you could still spec twice and use stuff like the Holy Avenger or Corsomir). Fighter/Druids or Fighter/Mages made the best tanks because when your armor may as well be confetti-paper being able to avoid or ignore hits is infinitely more important. Heck, even Clerics with their damage resistances (like armor of faith which actually reduced incoming damage by a %) and immunities made them excellent tanks (and draw upon holy might and righteous might and spell resistance made them combat monsters too).
The best Fighter Kit in the game was the Berserker (basically a barbarian-fighter) and that's because he was immune to a stupidly large amount of things while enraged (enraging gave +2 to hit and damage, and made you immune to everything from charm to maze).
Point in case, ashiel. Compare that encounter to most stuff in an AP. Players that survive your games will waltz through jade regent without breaking a sweat.
APs have to be made to work with beer and pretzels games with minimal alterations though. If they have massive mortality then games bog down.
What was the last really lethal AP? Some of the dungeon magazine ones like Age of Worms?
I suppose is like a new player wondering why his wizard level 5th did only 8 point of damage. We all know what wizards are capable to do, but it should be clear that wizards can be very very unoptimized with bad choices, the same happens with fighters.Out of the two, which can change his entire strategy around on the following day assuming he doesn't die due to his mistakes? I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with Lizard.
So?
you are missing the point. To build good wizard/sorcerer /barbarians/whatever you have to know what you are doing.
The point was that if bob can make dpr machines that also are good in other things then everyone can do it.
That's like saying because someone can win an olympic gold everyone can. The amount of effort and training it takes to do so make it impractical to say "everyone can do this". With enough system mastery, sure. However, I'm the guy that my players are gonna whine to if they made a mistake back at 4th level and now can't get that feat they need now because they should have chosen X prerequisite instead of Y or didn't realize they needed Z ability score to qualify for something by level O, and now can't because they can't exchange out a feat because all their stuff is locked into prerequisites for other stuff.
The wizard player can learn how to play the game, try new stuff, and experiment. If he decides "Wow, burning hands sucks" he can try sleep or colorspray or enlarge person tomorrow. If he doesn't have those spells, it's a trip to a small town and 15 gp each (10 gp to learn the spell from a caster and 5 gp to scribe it).
With the sort of system mastery it takes to make sure a Fighter is on par, the rest would be exceptionally powerful engines of awesomeness. :P
Man I'm pretty sure there's a big difference between pulling a Mary Lou Retton and building a fighter that doesn't just completely be terrible.
I like Bob's style but dude didn't exactly just land a perfect dismount.
Or maybe he did.
Maybe he did while rolling the fighters.
In that case, yeah, I can't top that.
I hate when people say "what if the fighter doesn't have his weapon"? or he's only good with his weapon.
What if the wizard doesn't have his spell book? What if the Barb can't rage? What if the paladin's enemies aren't evil?
Long story short, everyone has a weakness. Wizards get all this hype, but they die real easily far as I'm concerned. sure if they have 5 free rounds to prepare they are cool, but it usually takes one full attack from the bad guy before they are dead and screaming
"why'd you target me dude?!??!"
LMAO! It's all fun though. I really don't see many weaknesses or needs for any class. Then again, I also think multi-classing is cool and that level 20 abilities are practically worthless since very few adventures occur at that level.
Okay... Let me see, here is a build of a 9th-level Fighter who focuses more on "cool things to do in combat" than "MY DPR IS HIGHER THAN YOURS! RAWR!"
I hate Weapon Focus/Specialization because of their heavy feat requirement and extremelly boring benefits. So I only took Weapon Focus due to it being a very common prerequisite.
Tell me, how does his guy fare in combat, compared to a same level Barbarian/Ranger/Gunslinger/Paladin? Sadly, I'm pretty sure his numbers are not that high and he still isn't really useful out of combat.
Keep in mind that this is a build I'd actually consider playing, if I had to play a Fighter, so I hope I'm mistaken.
N Medium Humanoid (elf, human)
Init +6; Senses low-light vision; Perception +15
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Defense
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AC 23, touch 13, flat-footed 20 (+10 armor, +3 Dex)
hp 72 (9d10+18)
Fort +11, Ref +10, Will +10 (+2 vs. fear); +2 vs. enchantments
Defensive Abilities bravery +2; Immune sleep; Resist elven immunities
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft.
Melee +1 Armor spikes +15/+10 (1d6+6/x2) and
+2 Silversheen Bardiche +17/+12 (1d10+9/19-20/x2) and
Club +14/+9 (1d6+5/x2) and
Club +14/+9 (1d6+5/x2) and
Masterwork Net +11/+6 () and
Silversheen Lucerne hammer +15/+10 (1d12+7/x2)
Ranged +1 Composite longbow (Str +4) +16/+11 (1d8+6/19-20/x3)
Special Attacks weapon training abilities (heavy blades +2, bows +1)
--------------------
Statistics
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Str 20, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8
Base Atk +9; CMB +14; CMD 27
Feats Combat Reflexes (5 AoO/round), Cornugon Smash, Intimidating Prowess, Lunge, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack -3/+6, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Spear Dancer, Weapon Focus (Bardiche)
Traits Elven Reflexes, Indomitable Faith
Skills Intimidate +16, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +7, Knowledge (engineering) +4, Perception +15, Perform (dance) +3, Survival +1 (+3 to avoid becoming lost)
Languages Common, Elven
SQ elf blood
Combat Gear Oil of shillelagh, Alchemist's fire (5); Other Gear +1 Armor spikes (magical) Full plate, +1 Composite longbow (Str +4), +2 Silversheen Bardiche, Club, Club, Masterwork Net, Silversheen Lucerne hammer, Belt of physical might (Str & Dex +2), Bracers of falcon's aim, Cloak of resistance +3, Ioun stone (clear spindle), Wayfinder (1 @ 0 lbs), 632 GP
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Special Abilities
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Bravery +2 (Ex) +2 to Will save vs. Fear
Combat Reflexes (5 AoO/round) Can make extra attacks of opportunity/rd, and even when flat-footed.
Cornugon Smash When you damage an opponent with a Power Attack, you may make an immediate Intimidate check as a free action to attempt to demoralize your opponent.
Elf Blood You are counted as both elven and human for any effect relating to race.
Elven Immunities +2 save bonus vs Enchantments.
Elven Immunities - Sleep You are immune to magic sleep effects.
Ioun stone (clear spindle) Sustains bearer without food or water.
Low-Light Vision See twice as far as a human in low light, distinguishing color and detail.
Lunge Can increase reach by 5 ft, but take -2 to AC for 1 rd.
Point Blank Shot +1 to attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at up to 30 feet.
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Precise Shot You don't get -4 to hit when shooting or throwing into melee.
Rapid Shot You get an extra attack with ranged weapons. Each attack is at -2.
Spear Dancer: Each time you hit a creature with a two-handed reach weapon that you hav
Weapon Training (Blades, Heavy) +2 (Ex) +2 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Heavy Blades
Weapon Training (Bows) +1 (Ex) +1 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Bows
- His only +X bonus is weapon focus because it's a prerequisite for Spear Dancer. His schtick is hitting people with his Bardiche and making them Shaken and Dazzled.
- He's a decent archer and has *some* out-of-combat utility thanks to Intimidate and Knowledge(Dungeons), but nothing very useful (apparently people don't like being intimidated and most cities have a severe lack of aberrations and oozes). His saves are okay, I guess, and he has a few bonus against enchantment (half-elf), not to mention he's immune to magical sleep (half-elf) and posession/mind control from evil creatures (thanks to Wayfinder + Clear Spindle Ioun Stone! Yay!)
- His main weapon is a +2 Silversheen Bardiche, but he also carries around a +1 Composite Longbow, +1 Armor Spikes, and a Mwk Net and a Mwk Silversheen Lucerne Hammer that he plans to have enchanted in order to have a secondary main weapon, plus two clubs and 4 oils of Shilelagh, just in case. A few Alchemist's Fires are also part of his arsenal.
- He still has about 630gp to buy mundane gear and a few tricky arrows.
Of course, some people may prefer investing heavily in the spect tree with EWP: Falcata... But that's like the most boring build ever, so I don't give a damn about it.
How...how did you know my character's NAME?!
Get out of my head!
How...how did you know my character's NAME?!
Obviously, I can read your mind.
Get out of my head!
No way, man! I just brought my TV in here!
Anyway, I bring gifts for the fans of the weapon spec feat chain:
The most boring character ever...
Male Human (Shoanti) Fighter 9
N Medium Humanoid (human)
Init +4; Senses Perception +13
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Defense
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AC 23, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (+10 armor, +2 Dex, +1 deflection)
hp 81 (9d10+27)
Fort +12, Ref +8, Will +10 (+2 vs. fear)
Defensive Abilities bravery +2
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft.
Melee +2 Silversheen Falcata +21/+16 (1d8+15/17-20/x3)
Ranged +2 Composite longbow (Str +6) +15/+10 (1d8+9/19-20/x3)
Special Attacks weapon training abilities (heavy blades +2, bows +1)
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Statistics
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Str 22, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8
Base Atk +9; CMB +15; CMD 28 (37 vs. Grapple, 37 vs. Trip)
Feats Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Falcata), Furious Focus, Greater Weapon Focus (Falcata), Improved Critical (Falcata), Iron Will, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack -3/+6, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Weapon Focus (Falcata), Weapon Specialization (Falcata)
Traits Auspicious Tattoo (Shoanti), Reactionary
Skills Intimidate +11, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +12, Perception +13
Languages Common, Shoanti
Other Gear +1 Full plate, +2 Composite longbow (Str +6), +2 Silversheen Falcata, Belt of physical might (Str & Con +2), Bracers of falcon's aim, Cloak of resistance +3, Ring of protection +1, 582 GP
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Special Abilities
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Bravery +2 (Ex) +2 to Will save vs. Fear
Furious Focus If you are wielding a weapon in two hands, ignore the penalty for your first attack of each turn.
Point Blank Shot +1 to attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at up to 30 feet.
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Precise Shot You don't get -4 to hit when shooting or throwing into melee.
Rapid Shot You get an extra attack with ranged weapons. Each attack is at -2.
Weapon Training (Blades, Heavy) +2 (Ex) +2 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Heavy Blades
Weapon Training (Bows) +1 (Ex) +1 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Bows.
How does he fare compared to an equal level Barbarian/Ranger/Paladin/Gunslinger?
I'm guessing his numbers are a bit higher, but his in-combat versatility and out-of-combat is zero.
Point in case, ashiel. Compare that encounter to most stuff in an AP. Players that survive your games will waltz through jade regent without breaking a sweat.
I dunno. Truth be told I've sadly not had the chance to play through most of the APs (but I'd like to!). I've ran the first issue of Curse of the Crimson Throne (which is the 3.5 one but it works decently in PF if you either lower the CRs of the enemies as is appropriate or add NPC levels until they match their indicated CRs) and I can say that it was very swingy. Touching nothing in the adventure path at all and you will assuredly curbstomp the first segment of the adventure (I'm okay with this, it's a good opening to let PCs get familiar with what they're playing and let it slowly creep up in difficulty), but then they go and send you into a super-TPK encounter!
A single Imp has the ability to turn invisible at will. It has DR 5/silver. It has fast healing 2, and more than 12 hit points (13 in 3.5, and 16 in PF). It has immunity to fire and poison, resistance to acid and cold 10, and an AC of 17 (20 in 3.5). It can 1/day use a DC 15 suggestion. It has a +8 bonus to-hit and deals 1d4 damage and has a Dex-damaging poison at 1d3 damage per round for 6 rounds (in 3.5 it was immediate 1d4 dex and 2d4 dex secondary). The Imps also have some shapeshifting abilities.
And there are FOUR OF THEM (CR 6 encounter). This encounter is a bloody nightmare. The pseudo-dragons are a laugh. I'm not sure what on earth the writer was thinking, but the Pseudo-dragons might not even be present in the battle (the imps are immune to their attacks, immune to their poisons, and basically just completely immune to anything the tiny dragons want to do to them). If it wasn't for the fact my players are not afraid to run away when they are clearly outmatched, it would assuredly be a total party kill. And would have been if not for being in a city (they ran as fast as they could, busted into a house that wasn't theirs and then did everything they could to keep the little bastards out until they got bored.
The encounter went much like this before the party fled. Surprise round goes to the Imps (invisibility at will man, at will) and they picked some poor dude (I think it was the bard) and stabbed him half to death with their stingers (4d4 damage and 4 saves vs poison at DCs 13, 15, 17, and 19). The bard was properly fubar at this point. So then the Fighter beats them on Initiative but misses due to their 17 AC (it's 20 in 3.5 but I was running it using Pathfinder). The little Imps then rush forward and begin stabbing the Fighter as well. Given that he was a well optimized Fighter (Dex +2, +6 chainmail = AC 18) only about half of them hit him, so the 1st level fighter takes 2d4 damage and makes a DC 13 then 15 save vs Poison. Unfortunately the Fighter's Fortitude is only +4 (+2 Con, +2 class) and so he biffed one of them and begins taking Dexterity damage. The bard misses and the wizard dives for cover and tells everyone to get out of the way so he can cast a spell (and begins casting sleep using the start-complete action), and the party's Ranger swings back around and tries to whack them with his Glaive and manages to hit one of them with a roll of 11 thanks to flanking with the Fighter. So the Ranger deals 1d10+6 damage with his glaive, but it was effectively cut in half (and couldn't have one-shot the Imp without a critical) by the Imp's damage reduction. So the wounded Imp takes flight for a bit and turns Invisible again (and just milks its fast healing 2 until fully healed which takes little to no time) before coming back down to ambush someone's flat-footed AC with a +10 to hit and 1d4 + poison again.
It took very little time for the party to realize that Hell itself seemed to have taken offense to their existence and beat feet to get the hell out of Korvosa. The book says that the Pseudodragons don't stick around after the party defeats the Imps, but that's just laughable. It took no time at all for the little dragons to flee for their very lives as they were overpowered to such an unfair degree of uselessness that it makes you want to cry and call the Imps bullies out of sympathy for the useless little critters (the Pseudodragons probably would have been more help to the party flying around in circles and cheering for them to not die).
I'm not sure how the rest of the APs are but this encounter was brutal. The modules I've seen are pretty brutal as well. I ran Flight of the Red Raven and plan to run Entombed with the Pharaohs one of these days, but neither was particularly kind in their encounters. One in particular stood out as being particularly nasty that would have ended in a TPK if not for some cleverness by the PCs.
The amount of times they had to whole up and rest to recover their HP and such was pretty telling as well, and that was with them all decently optimized, with a psionic monk and a psychic warrior in the party who were both excellent tanks/support.
I dunno much about Jade Reagent though, other than a friend of mine told me that it was really obviously written to be about the NPCs and not your party. I dunno anything about the difficulty. I was going to play in it, but he decided not to run it, for the aforementioned reason (which was too bad, I was looking forward to playing in it).
I won't claim to know a ton about adventure paths. What I do know about them from my own experiences and the boards is that they are swingy, and in terms of difficulty "when it rains, it pours".
I hate when people say "what if the fighter doesn't have his weapon"? or he's only good with his weapon.
What if the wizard doesn't have his spell book? What if the Barb can't rage? What if the paladin's enemies aren't evil?
A wizard doesn't need his spellbook in combat. He can safely store it aside, such as in his backpack, where there is no line of effect to it and thus it is out of harm's way (perhaps even in a box, inside of another box :P). The moment that the wizard has to actively bring out his spell book and whack things with it, or suddenly can't use a looted spellbook without losing access to all his feats, we'll talk.
As to barbarians who cannot rage, that's an odd one. About the only way I know of to prevent a barbarian from raging is to ensure he's unconscious (and even then I think there's a feat for that). Unless you mean he's run out of rage rounds per day. If that's the case, well I imagine the rest of the party needs a break too, because if the Barbarian has run out of all his rounds of rage you guys have been through hell and back and need a break, as I'm sure everyone's resources in HP/Spells/Etc needs a breather).
Paladins don't need evil enemies. They are OMGWTF-AWESOME if their enemies happen to be evil, but are still quite capable of preforming with quite literally any weapon they pick up and don't lose their class features because they're swapping between a bow, a mace, or an axe. Paladins later on have access to things like divine power which turns them into engines of destruction (granting up to +20 Hp, +6 to hit and damage, +6 to Strength-based checks, and +1 attack/round for a whole encounter), and have excellent synergy with Eldritch Heritage feats (dragon is a personal favorite for the energy resistances and +4 natural armor and supernatural flight, though Orc is arguably more amazing in the long run).
LMAO! It's all fun though. I really don't see many weaknesses or needs for any class. Then again, I also think multi-classing is cool and that level 20 abilities are practically worthless since very few adventures occur at that level.
That's cool and all, and I'm aware that a lot of people don't go into high levels. For those people it's entirely reasonable to only look at levels X through Y. I on the other hand have played in an GMed high level games. I've had a campaign go post-20th (where I found how useless the 3.x epic rules are). I do believe quite a few campaigns go beyond 11th level though, and IMHO a great majority of what I've said here applies much lower than that as well.
I don't feel competent to comment about the fighter in specific, but I don't like feats as a mechanic too much. My biggest gripe with them is, as the line progresses, the demand for feats increases, yet each particular feat loses value.
Now, I'm not sure I can explain myself properly, so please bear with me. Say you're making a fighter. Screw optimization, you want to have fun doing lots of things in combat, so you want to do a lot of maneuvers. Core gives you sunder, disarm, trip, bull rush, overrun and grapple. Each of these maneuvers has at least two feats tied to them, one of them negating the enemies' opportunity attacks and the other upgrading the maneuver in some way. You probably don't need to worry much about upgrades, but eating AOOs hurts, so if you want to utilize all these maneuvers, you really want the Improved feats on them. That's six feats spent just on not being hit a lot of extra times by the enemy. Still, for a fighter, that's not impossible - in a few levels, you can collect them all.
Then, APG comes, and with it: Dirty Trick, Drag, Reposition, Steal... that's four more maneuvers, and again, each is handled by two feats minimum.
Obviously, few people actually care about being able to do all the maneuvers, but what I'm getting at is this: playing with core only, each Improved or Greater (Maneuver) feat you took covered 1/12 of total possible competence when it comes to executing combat maneuvers effectively. After just the APG, each feat covers 1/20 of total possible competence. Meanwhile, the total number of feats a fighter can take in the course of going through his twenty levels stays the same.
The same principle applies to any feat chain one could be interested in. Every big sourcebook adds something to the chain, and sometimes player companions add something useful as well as a racial feat. This way, each particular feat becomes less awesome, because no matter how good it makes you at doing something, you can count on there being another feat that lets you do the same thing even better - so you want it as well, hence you want more and more feats all the time. It's a never-ending race which you cannot win, because you keep operating on the same limited resource.
One could say the same applies to spellcasters and their toys - casters generally don't get to cast more spells with consecutive sourcebooks, not anymore than fighters get more feats. This is partially true for non-prepared spellcasters, but vastly mitigated by how many spells they get to learn. A 20th level Bard knows 40 spells total, a Sorcerer 52 including those granted by his bloodline. Same for Inquisitors and Oracles, and that's before things like human's favored class bonus adding another 20 to the lot, or blowing feats on Expanded Arcana (purely theoretically, you can gain another 20 spells this way). Meanwhile, wizards, witches and magi can pay to include worthwhile new spells in their books, and clerics, druids, paladins and rangers simply get every new addition to their list at no cost. These eleven extra feats fighters get suddenly don't look so hot, do they? Sure, casters still have a limited number of spells they can cast at a given moment, but somewhere around 5th-6th level, it turns out they can cast enough of them to pull their weight in several encounters, and high level casters rarely deplete themselves in the course of the day. Huh, wouldn't it be nice if fighters could retrain all their extra feats each morning?
One could also say it doesn't matter whether you have absolutely all the feats related to what you want to do, as long as you can do it effectively enough to contribute. This is essentially true, at least for most teams I know of. Still, if you have a role overlap in your team (say, more than one person wanting to dish out damage from the front line), this may cause unhealthy competition and make a character unfun to play if the other guy keeps upgrading his performance while you'd rather take a few "fluff" feats, like some very cool but ultimately kinda useless racial stuff. Again, it's not about some abstract DPR competition or other form of theorycrafting - you'll probably be alright doing a few points of damage less, but if it ever reaches a point where it's clear that the other guy can do all you can in your chosen field and half again as much, pursuing that activity may suddenly seem pointless and a lot less fun. Of course, some players will not care even then, so more power to them!
Phew, this turned out longer than I expected. I hope it's comprehensible.
When you lower CRs/add NPC levels until they match, you'll probably make them harder as you automatically optimize to a larger degree than the AP designers.
. I'm not sure what on earth the writer was thinking
Agreed. I have the AP in front of me as we speak, and it's a very weird encounter, I'll even say badly written. The things you mention - that the imps are immune to most things the dragons do while the dragons are designed to be the saviours of the day - indicate that that's an _accident_ in the design, and not intended. Maybe the designer though pseudodragons had the "good" subtype, which would make sense and let them bypass the DR. I think that was a simple mistake from the dev's.
But:
[spoiler=minor CotC spoiler]
In this event, a flight of four imps swoops down to attack the PCs, seeing them as possible easy targets for gold and mayhem.
This to me indicates that it's not an "in for the kill" backstab type of encounter, but rather a "wooohooo some poor sods are out there, let's see what happens if we smash'em!".
I agree that in most AP's have one or two encounters that can be really hard for some parties, but generally, most encounters are pretty easy for an optimized party.
I mean, aren't the iconics meant to be able to finish their adventure paths?
Tell me, how does his guy fare in combat, compared to a same level Barbarian/Ranger/Gunslinger/Paladin? Sadly, I'm pretty sure his numbers are not that high and he still isn't really useful out of combat.
Keep in mind that this is a build I'd actually consider playing, if I had to play a Fighter, so I hope I'm mistaken.
Fighty McFighter:Male Half-Elf Fighter 9
N Medium Humanoid (elf, human)
Init +6; Senses low-light vision; Perception +15
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Defense
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AC 23, touch 13, flat-footed 20 (+10 armor, +3 Dex)
hp 72 (9d10+18)
Fort +11, Ref +10, Will +10 (+2 vs. fear); +2 vs. enchantments
Defensive Abilities bravery +2; Immune sleep; Resist elven immunities
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Offense
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Speed 30 ft.
Melee +1 Armor spikes +15/+10 (1d6+6/x2) and
+2 Silversheen Bardiche +17/+12 (1d10+9/19-20/x2) and
Club +14/+9 (1d6+5/x2) and
Club +14/+9 (1d6+5/x2) and
Masterwork Net +11/+6 () and
Silversheen Lucerne hammer +15/+10 (1d12+7/x2)
Ranged +1 Composite longbow (Str +4) +16/+11 (1d8+6/19-20/x3)
Special Attacks weapon training abilities (heavy blades +2, bows +1)
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Statistics
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Str 20, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8
Base Atk +9; CMB +14; CMD 27
Feats Combat Reflexes (5 AoO/round), Cornugon Smash, Intimidating Prowess, Lunge, Point Blank Shot, Power Attack -3/+6, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Spear Dancer, Weapon Focus (Bardiche)
Traits Elven Reflexes, Indomitable Faith
Skills Intimidate +16, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +7, Knowledge (engineering) +4, Perception +15, Perform (dance) +3, Survival +1 (+3 to avoid becoming lost)
Languages Common, Elven
SQ elf blood
Combat Gear Oil of shillelagh, Alchemist's fire (5); Other Gear +1 Armor spikes (magical) Full plate, +1 Composite longbow (Str +4), +2 Silversheen Bardiche, Club, Club, Masterwork Net, Silversheen Lucerne hammer, Belt of physical might (Str & Dex +2), Bracers of falcon's aim, Cloak of resistance +3, Ioun stone (clear spindle), Wayfinder (1 @ 0 lbs), 632 GP
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Special Abilities
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Bravery +2 (Ex) +2 to Will save vs. Fear
Combat Reflexes (5 AoO/round) Can make extra attacks of opportunity/rd, and even when flat-footed.
Cornugon Smash When you damage an opponent with a Power Attack, you may make an immediate Intimidate check as a free action to attempt to demoralize your opponent.
Elf Blood You are counted as both elven and human for any effect relating to race.
Elven Immunities +2 save bonus vs Enchantments.
Elven Immunities - Sleep You are immune to magic sleep effects.
Ioun stone (clear spindle) Sustains bearer without food or water.
Low-Light Vision See twice as far as a human in low light, distinguishing color and detail.
Lunge Can increase reach by 5 ft, but take -2 to AC for 1 rd.
Point Blank Shot +1 to attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at up to 30 feet.
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Precise Shot You don't get -4 to hit when shooting or throwing into melee.
Rapid Shot You get an extra attack with ranged weapons. Each attack is at -2.
Spear Dancer: Each time you hit a creature with a two-handed reach weapon that you hav
Weapon Training (Blades, Heavy) +2 (Ex) +2 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Heavy Blades
Weapon Training (Bows) +1 (Ex) +1 Attack, Damage, CMB, CMD with Bows
I really like this Fighter Lemmy. The only thing I'd suggest is perhaps dropping the Barditch down to a +1 and grabbing an amulet of natural armor and a ring of protection. AC 23 is pretty low at 9th level (you can easily hit AC 20 with mundane gear and a +2 Dex at 1st level with your starting cash), and I think the +10% evasion from a Ring and Amulet would help more than the +5% hit from the additional +1 would go further in ensuring you last for more hits. You're a martial anyway, so you've got a nice phat BAB helping you out, and hopefully you'll get some buffs from your party (heroism is a favorite).
Meanwhile, you have a nice presence, and the fact you seem focused on Intimidating enemies means you can at least debuff some stuff reasonably well (honestly being able to inflict a -2 to checks on a hit is pretty cool for tag-teaming with your party mages and lowers the incoming damage you'll get since the -2 is a -10% to hit and confirm criticals of enemies you strike with it). I feel your pain on the skills issue and such, but at least this Fighter looks like he'd be pretty fun to play and has some presence in the battlefield, and your clearly a competent off-archer which means flying enemies and distance battles are not unkind to you.
If I was to have a Fighter on my team, I think I'd want it to be yours, Lemmy. :)
